FAMILY values is the recurring theme in the 13th Dublin Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which opens at the IFI next Thursday night and runs over the August bank holiday weekend, writes Michael Dwyer.
"We are showcasing some films which explore the complexities and richness of our families - those that formed us and those we have formed," says festival director Brian Sheehan in his introduction to the lively international programme of features, documentaries and shorts.
The opening film, Cockles and Muscles (Crustacés et Coquillages) follows a French couple (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Gilbert Melki) and their two teenaged children over an eventful summer holiday on the Riviera. Complications kick in and the scene is set for a farce in the Feydeau tradition when the very close friend of their uptight son turns up, followed by a plumber with a past (Jean-Marc Barr). Olivier Ducastle and Jacques Martineau, who co-wrote and co-directed the movie, will attend the screening, and the festival will show two of their earlier films, Drôle de Félix and Jeanne and the Perfect Guy.
Bear Cub, the Spanish comedy that closes the festival on August 1st, explores how a thirtysomething gay dentist copes when his hippie sister is jailed on drugs charges and he has to care for her nine-year-old son while simultaneously trying to pursue his gay lifestyle.
In the French Queer Parents, a sulky teen lives with her closeted mother and the mother's sensible girlfriend in the countryside while her dad lives with his boyfriend in Paris. We Are Dad is a US documentary focussed on two gay men who are foster parents to five HIV-positive children.
Young German director Marco Kruezepaintner tackles teen sexual longings in Summer Storm (Sommersturm), in which the angst-ridden protagonist, Tobi, is a young athlete struggling with an infatuation for his best friend and rowing team colleague. Impressively played by popular German TV star Robert Stadlobler, Tobi is forced to confront his sexuality when his rowers are pitted against an openly gay team; the consequences are treated with honesty and conviction.
Bound star Gina Gershon teams up with Lori Petty, Drea de Matteo and Shelley Cole as an all-woman band in the US drama Prey for Rock 'n' Roll. Nicholas Cazalé and Stéphane Rideau play brothers in Gaël Morel's homoerotic French film, Le Clan. The Hong Kong production Butterfly deals with a married teacher who seeks out her former lover, now a nun in Macao.
The documentary selection also includes That Man: Peter Berlin, dealing with a 1970s gay porn star, one of whose early movies, That Boy, will also be shown. Garden is set in a rundown area of Tel Aviv, where young gay prostitutes and drug addicts congregate. Drag Kings on Tour follows six cross-dressing women performers on a tour through Canada and the US Midwest.
And this year's classic revival is the incomparable 1950 melodrama of backstage backstabbing, All Above Eve (1950), which features some of the wittiest, bitchiest lines in cinema history. Fasten your seatbelts.
Look Out! The 13th Dublin Lesbian & Gay Film Festival runs at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin, from July 28th-August 1st. www.gcn.ie/dlgff
